Armorica
In ancient times, Armorica or Aremorica (
Name
The name Armorica is a Latinized form of the
In medieval
In Breton, which belongs to the Brythonic branch of the Insular Celtic languages, along with Welsh and Cornish, "on [the] sea" is war vor (Welsh ar fôr, "f" being voiced and pronounced like English "v"), but the older form arvor is used to refer to the coastal regions of Brittany, in contrast to argoad (ar "on/at", coad "forest" [Welsh ar goed or coed "trees"]) for the inland regions.[6] The cognate modern usages suggest that the Romans first contacted coastal people in the inland region and assumed that the regional name Aremorica referred to the whole area, both coastal and inland.
History
Trade between Armorica and Britain, described by
Archaeology has not yet been as enlightening in Iron-Age Armorica as the coinage, which has been surveyed by Philip de Jersey.[9]
Under the
The "Armorican" peninsula came to be settled with
The linguistic origins of
There was a fair amount of creation of identity in the
migration period. We know that the mixed, but largely British and Frankish population of Kent repackaged themselves as 'Jutes', and the largely British populations in the lands east of Dumnonia (Devon and Cornwall) seem to have ended up as 'West Saxons'. In western Armorica, the small élite which managed to impose an identity on the population happened to be British rather than 'Gallo-Roman' in origin, so they became Bretons. The process may have been essentially the same."[13]
According to C.E.V. Nixon, the collapse of Roman power and the depredations of the Visigoths led Armorica to act "like a magnet to peasants, coloni, slaves and the hard-pressed" who deserted other Roman territories, further weakening them.[14]
In popular culture
The home village of the fictional comic-book hero
Footnotes
- ^ Merriam-Webster Dictionary, s.v. "Aremorica"; The Free Dictionary, s.v. "Aremorica" Archived 2011-06-07 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ Delamarre 2003, p. 53.
- ISSN 0083-5897.
- .
- ^ Delamarre 2003, pp. 204–205.
- ^ The Irish form is ar mhuir, the Manx is er vooir and the Scottish form air mhuir. However, in those languages, the phrase means "on the sea", as opposed to ar thír or ar thalamh/ar thalúin (er heer/er haloo, air thìr/air thalamh) "on the land".
- ^ History Compass : Home Archived April 19, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
- De Bello Gallicoii.4.
- ^ "Coinage in Iron Age Armorica", Studies in Celtic Coinage, 2 (1994)
- ^ Leon Fleuriot's primarily linguistic researches in Les Origines de la Bretagne, emphasizes instead the broader influx of Britons into Roman Gaul that preceded the fifth-century collapse of Roman power.
- ^ Procopius, in History of the Wars, viii, 20, 6-14.
- ^ K. Jackson, Language and History in Early Britain Edinburgh, 1953:14f.
- ^ Martin Henig, British Archaeology, 2003, review of The British Settlement of Brittany by Pierre-Roland Giot, Philippe Guigon & Bernard Merdrignac
- ^ C.E.V. Nixon, "Relations Between Visigoths and Romans in Fifth Century Gaul", in John Drinkwater, Hugh Elton (eds) Fifth-Century Gaul: A Crisis of Identity?, Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 69
- ^ Keys, David (1 April 1993). "Asterix's home village is uncovered in France: Archaeological dig reveals fortified Iron Age settlement on 10-acre site". The Independent. Retrieved 17 April 2015.
- ^ Rearrived from North Armorica
- Bibliography
- ISBN 9782877723695.
See also
- Armoricani
- Breton language
- Saxon shore (Tractus armoricanus)
- Jublains archeological site